This will probably get down voted oblivion, but I'm very sad that there is so much anger and sadness surrounding the upcoming gamescom.

As a European we are usually left out of big events and drops, so I didn't think we would ever get the official cosplayers here at a European con.

I'm both very excited that they are coming here, but at the same time sad that there so so much negativity surrounding is.

It feels like now that it's finally our turn to enjoy something it's hard to be excited about it. It also gives me anxiety that I feel like I will get judged by other players for wanting to go to the booth and enjoy what people from America and Asian cons have been able to enjoy.

Don't get me wrong I want Valko back in the game, but I just hope none of the volunteers there or the cosplayers will get harassed.

Firstly, I’m just gonna say, I haven’t been spending ANY money in game, I’ve been saving up for months (First with a aurum pass I lived to regret aaaand a diamond weekly anniversary pack I also lived to regret) even prior to Valko’s cancellation and have been logging in solely for dailies and whatnot because I was saving for Valko/still am saving for Valko. I got to 10k+ diamonds and had 29 gold wishes plus blue wishes and explorer currencies blah blah wtv.

Anyway.

Though I am a harem girlie, I lean Raf main pretty often so I reluctantly decided to use the first free 10 and BOOM got Rafayel’s first myth. (Mind you the pity was at 68, more on this later)

I was hyped for a second then the gloom just hit because of the state of the game. But I’m kinda impulsive so I spent some diamonds and kept getting at least one 5 star per pull (The pity system started at 62 and moved up 2 as I pulled then back down 2? weird glitch). This happened like at least 30, maybe 40 more pulls.

I got the second myth at like 50-60, fast forward about 70, 80 (90?) pulls and I get a r1 for a card.

But it just didn’t hit the same despite my determination to keep trying, I feel like I’d be genuinely hyped if Infolded wasn’t playing in our faces right now.

I’m one of the people who believe Valko is still coming back and perhaps InF is letting things cool down and settling legal issues and planning to drop Valko eventually. I have to believe it for my own sanity atp.

I know it's slightly too early to say anything definitive about VMG, and I'm definitely open to hear more about other combat main's opinions on him. I wanted to gather some of my thoughts so far after playing too much with him, while trying not to show my bias as a Raf main.

One thing I will say, VMG is not weak. If you're skipping VMG and you own LSG, you're not missing out too much. Or if you own KoD, I think you are still good with KoD as your red-stella main.

Pros:

+ Fun companion to play with interesting mechanics, I love the Rafayel gameplay 😭

+ Extremely strong for stellamatching weakness builds

+ Some might find this as a con, I see it as a positive, it didn't shelf LSG

+ Helped me gain 9 more stars in FOO (162 -> 171)

Cons:

- Suppression weakness mechanic feels wonky for mob stages (though maybe this is too early to say)

- I. hate. the. claymore. (though it being semi-ranged is cool)

- Crit build seems to be barely on par or weaker than LSG's crit builds

- Feels much more single target than LSG

- Mistakes seem to be much more punishing than with LSG in addition (imo) being harder to overall play than LSG

- Weird choices with the kit

- Seems to die easier than LSG (there are several reasons for this)

Overall, I would say VMG is solid addition with LSG, it might not completely replace LSG, especially in yellow matching stages. If I had to suggest one over the other, I'd say both have their good sides, but I would give my vote to LSG.

If I had to give one stage where to use him, it would be stellamatching boss stage. You have plenty of time to setup your Suppression weakness state, which needs slightly intentional playing with VMG. But once you get the hang of it, it's quite pleasant.

Mob stages feel slightly awkward with him, since you have to completely forget resonating until you have set up the double Suppression stack to the enemies. Some might not get them both either. What with FOO stages I tried with him, I did manage get better results than with LSG, and stellamatching with the green 4* pair was completely valid option even in the higher level stages. Once we get the second part of the blue pair, I'm really curious to give a shot at 59 with both LSG and VMG.

Speaking of FOO59 which was a nightmare for me, I tried my R2 VMG there with a crit build and I feel safe to say that the no-resonate brute force gameplay seems worse than (R2) LSG. With LSG it's quite luck and skill based, but with VMG being dependant on cooldowns for the Mortal Soul state, it just felt less flowing than with LSG. Not to mention, the Suppression Weakness mechanic goes almost completely to waste. I don't know if there would be an alternative world with weakness and brute force for VMG.

Overall gameplay

The good

I already mentioned that I love playing as Raf, I would be in that state forever if it was feasible, but alas. I love high-speed gameplay, but the damage bonus from the sync passive skill won't apply after the Vermilion Visage bar is depleted, so you just won't deal as much damage anymore.

If you get the rotation correctly and going well, the weakness states just seem to melt with him.

The bad

I am a slight masochist and I actually liked Hunter's Claymore gameplay when I had to do it, and no myth claymore gameplay has been as satisfying to me since. And unfortunately, I think VMG claymore is the worst claymore gameplay I have played. Edit: I went in to try the claymore without enemies in the Shield Breaking room, and I noticed you can dodge between the charged attacks. I put the rest of what I wrote in brackets, but it doesn't seem as bad as I thought, and just needs some readjusting. (The mechanic how MC can apply the Suppression Weakness stack is just atrocious. You have to successfully chain 3 charged attacks in a row, which is just ridiculously difficult when you're playing against an enemy that is trying to kill you. You basically can't dodge, and you have to hope that you won't get staggered or interrupted by Rafayel's armor break animation (R1+) or you have to start the chain again. The chain feels really slow to me, and quite difficult to distinguish at this point where and how long you have to press the attack button down. I'm sure that will be better once I take the time and actually practise that alone.)

But I can't stop wondering why they didn't just add the Suppression Stack mechanic to the Empowered Action skill? Since you have to do 3 charged attacks for it, they just don't have to be the actual chain. The second one that really baffles me is that there seemingly isn't any mechanic to Perfect dodge. As someone who has mastered Perfect dodge to come from the depths of my muscle memory, it's just odd to me that there's NOTHING as exchange for doing a perfect dodge. Again, I just personally can't see why Rafayel's Suppression Weakness stacking couldn't be with a Perfect dodge. Since it's capping at 2 either way, it just feels odd to me that it's so complicated to get ( Action skill -> 3 charged attacks -> empowered action skill -> empowered support skill).

In addition to all this, since there's a lot of mechanics relying on getting those 3 charged attacks with MC, it just feels really punishing when you can't get them. And I do way too often still forget to resonate before entering Martial Soul since there's no rhytm there. I'm getting better at it.

Also, it feels less AoE than LSG. Quite often when I'm playing with LSG, I just can take the target to the strogest enemy and the others just die in the process. But with VMG, I feel more often there's weak stragglers in the distance that barely have taken damage at all.

As I mentioned, VMG seems to die much more easily than LSG. Well, I don't think it's a fair comparison since LSG is a ranged companion with DEF scaling, so usually Rafayel himself isn't in danger to die (actually, I realised I never had him die on my main account when I heard him dying the first time on my 1lvl cards account), and with MC you're dodging and dashing through enemies all the time. But with VMG, when you exit the Martial Soul, Rafayel keeps his HP and if you take too much hits as him during Martial Soul, he can die easily after that. He of course regens his HP when you enter Martial Soul again, but it's something you need to pay attention to.

Balance compared to LSG

As I mentioned, there's clearly intention to not overshadow LSG and I actually like that. I was quite sad when I got GoT on his rerun, and after 2 months of playing with him, I had to already shelf him. So I feel positive about the powercreep that it's not that bad that I thought it could be.

I hope the companions in the future have some clear thing they actually excel at, and that you could have a roster of companions to play, instead of having just one that dominates everywhere.

Overall I feel like VMG is in same power level as LSG, if not slightly better. However, I feel LSG will shine better for crit builds and with MS pair bonuses. So if you were worried about VMG completely overshadowing LSG, that didn't happen. I get why people might be disappointed that it didn't, I'm glad it didn't.

So as I said, if you have LSG and feel like you don't want to pull for VMG, I don't think you're missing out too much. The 9 stars I got from FOO were from getting better stellamatching companion, which helped me with those stages that I had to brute force to actually stellamatching be a proper option.

I hope I'm clear with that VMG is actually a good companion, but not an unskippable one. If LSG is an S+ tier companion, VMG would be an S++ for weakness, S- or S for brute force. It still deals good damage, but when I have to choose, I'll choose LSG over VMG for brute force. Of course I don't what the comparison would be at R3.

My thoughts on Suppression Weakness

Aside from VMG's mechanics, since it might be a new thing that is a mechanic for all the 4th myths or some of them, it's an interesting mechanic. Of course these points are just from experiencing the mechanic with VMG and I think there's just two problems with it:

1. There is no explanation in game what the stacks do and how much more Suppression adds to weakness damage. It feels very vague, like DEF shredding or other debuffs in this game because we can't see enemy stats. We need more info about this mechanic.
2. It feels janky/awkward for mob stages. It needs enemies to be not weakened to apply Suppression to them, so you're bit in like... Do you resonate to weaken the enemies to deal damage to them? Or do you try add suppression to get some amount more damage to them later? So far what I tested, it's a little inconclusive, but I haven't tested it thoroughly.

It's interesting either way, it spices the gameplay a bit, possibly turning the non-existent meta to truly prefer stellamatching over brute force.

Pull or no pull?

Honestly, given the current circumstances (the Valko situation and overall combat state of the game), I'll say it's a no pull. Not because it's necessarily bad, but compared to LSG, it feels more situational. If you enjoy VMG's theme, visuals and story, you won't regret it.

But given we haven't gotten any true new combat modes or something to use these new myths to other than 30 orbit levels and a new SHC team branch that will be catered to VMG, it's hard to justify suggesting to pull for it. If you're not a Rafayel main, your diamonds are better used on your mains who will get their myths soon (except Caleb). I don't have regrets pulling it and I'm excited to use him alongside LSG.

And it being red, which is Rafayel's 4th color, it's not necessarily a beginner friendly myth. It will help a lot, especially if you don't have LSG, but it will take some time until you get to enjoy his MA pair in a while properly. I got to see the first levels above Fire Orbit 210 and those clearly ask that you have the pair. The only free 5* card that is red for Rafayel is Rising Tides, which you need to buy from Wishing Well. This means to R3 it, you need total of 720 wishing well shards for it. And his options for free red 4* cards are bad as he only has 2 standard pool lunar reds and 1 red lunar in Galaxy Explorer, which means if you want to actually match red with Rafayel, you'll need limited cards to help with that. So for example, Xavier (with KoD) or Zayne (with MoF pair and GoA myth) has better and cheaper options to match red than VMG. And since they might get the same Suppression mechanic, it might be better to do red-stellamatching with them than VMG thanks to their better options for red cards.

The protocores you get from pull rewards are just a trap to sink in more pulls for them. Don't fall for it. They are fine if you truly don't have anything better for them. but for me who's been farming protocores for long and have a really good stash, I already got better ones.

As for the myth itself, I don't get the complaints against it. Even though I feel like I was a bit negative writing this post, I still want to say I have enjoyed playing it, the story feels true to his character and I love to have fully fire-dedicated myth for him. I really enjoyed reading through it and I have had a new spark for the combat in this game.

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Since I used a lot of acronyms, here's a quick list:

VMG = Vermilion Martial God (Raf's 4th myth)
LSG = Lemurian Sea God (Raf's 3rd myth)
GoT = God of Tides (Raf's 2nd myth)
FOO = Fluctulant Open Orbit (the more difficult open orbit)
KoD = King of Deathknight (Xavier's 3rd myth, previous red myth)
MoF = Master of Fate (Zayne's 2nd myth)
GoA = God of Annihiliation (Zayne's 3rd myth)
R0, R1, R2, R3 = the card rank (the more ranks, stronger they are)
AoE = Area of effect
MC = Main Character

If you're someone who's trying to skip, stay strong! If you regret skipping it, you can get it from the rerun in a year.

And I want to make it clear, these are just my thoughts, I don't claim to be a combat overlord, just someone who has been passionate about the combat in this game. I'm definitely looking out for other combat player's opinions, since it's still a new myth and we don't know yet if there's any hidden mechanics that aren't obvious.

TL;DR: New myth good, doesn't fully replace LSG if you have it. Skippable if you are on the edge whether or not to pull.